Texas selects a team to manage its largest taxable bond issue ever.

DALLAS -- Texas named a 13-member team to underwrite the state's largest-ever taxable bond sale with a $300 million offering by year-end to fund the new Texas Workers' Compensation insurance pool.

Glen Hartman, executive director of the Texas Public Finance Authority, which will issue the bonds, said the three-member board yesterday named Texas-based Rauscher, Pierce, Refsnes Inc., Estrada Securities of Dallas, and PaineWebber as co-senior managers for the issue.

The firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld were named bond counsel under an agreement to cap their fee at $35,000.

Mr. Hartman said most -- if not all -- of the issue will have to be taxable because the bond proceeds will be used to capitalize a new insurance pool financed by payments from private companies, primarily insurers.